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Call Me Illegal: the Semantic Struggle Over Seeking Asylum in Australia

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Call me illegal The semantic struggle over seeking asylum in Australia Ben Doherty Thomson Reuters Fellow Trinity Term 2015 Abstract Since the arrival of the first post-colonial ‘boatpeople’ on Australian shores in 1976, the language used by governments and media to discuss those who arrive ‘irregularly’ by sea has changed dramatically. From earlier descriptors as “refugees” and “boatpeople”, asylum seekers who arrive now in Australian waters are officially referred to in government statements as “illegals”, ministers have publicly alleged they “could be murderers [or] terrorists” and report “whole villages” are coming to Australia in uncontrollable “floods”. Prime Ministers are reported in the media condemning asylum seekers as opportunists who “jump the queue”, and “throw their children overboard”, while discussion of Australia’s policies regarding asylum seekers is now framed as a matter of “border protection” from “threats to national security”. While these discursive changes have attracted public, media, and academic attention, this paper seeks to ask further: where has this semantic change come from? What forces have driven it, and why? What impact has this changed rhetoric had on public opinion and understanding of asylum seekers? And what responsibility rests with those who report these words and these phrases about these people? In assessing these questions, this paper will rely on primary sources – the Commonwealth Record, government statements, cabinet minutes, and interviews with key policy and political figures – and secondary sources – media reportage, published papers and analyses. This paper will seek to critique the changes in rhetoric used by governments and media to discuss boat-borne asylum seekers in Australia, specifically examining four distinct, and crucial, periods in the development of Australia’s asylum seeker policy and political debate. - 1976-1979 – the first ‘wave’ of the first post-colonial ‘boat-people’ to Australia - 1990-1992 – the development and implementation of Australia’s policy of mandatory detention for all boat-borne asylum seekers - 2001 – the lead-up to and implementation of the ‘Pacific Solution’, including the Tampa crisis, the ‘children overboard’ affair, and the impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks - 2013 – the election campaign and government of Tony Abbott, and its key policy of ‘stopping the boats’. These particular periods can be seen as crucial markers in the development of Australian asylum policy and as critical moments in its public discourse. This paper will further question to what extent these changes in rhetoric have been deliberately constructed for political aims. It will ask how changes in language have been adopted, or challenged, by Australia’s media, and if and how those semantic shifts have impacted upon the Australian public’s perception and understanding of asylum seekers and refugees. Finally, the paper will compare the Australian experience with international situations, understanding the global context of what is, by definition, a trans-national issue. It concludes with some notes of observation for Australian journalism. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank, firstly, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, without whose generosity, foresight, and philanthropy, this paper would never have existed. Your support for the profession of journalism, and for its practitioners, is commendable, and in this instance especially, most gratefully received. This fellowship has been an extraordinary opportunity I could never have experienced otherwise. Thank you. I would like to offer my grateful thanks to Rob McNeil for his painstaking and patient supervision, chiefly for his fantastically engaging conversations over my thesis, the state of the global media, and the problems of the world, over the terrific flat whites at Brew. Rob’s passion for this subject, his thoughtfulness, and his willingness to challenge my thinking has improved this paper immeasurably. I would like, too, to thank James Painter for his tireless assistance, without his insight, experience and meticulous eye for detail, this work could not have been produced. My grateful thanks, too, go to Guy Goodwin-Gill, Emeritus Professor of All Souls College, for his generous assistance and encouragement. I appreciate the time and effort all have dedicated, always in pursuit of greater scholarship. I owe a great many thanks to all who read drafts and offered ideas, critiques, and fearless advice. You are too numerous to mention, but you know who you are. I would like to thank those who agreed to be interviewed for this paper, or who assisted in guiding me towards key people: your contributions have been invaluable. I would like, too, to thank Kellie Riordan, for her enthusiasm and her invaluable guidance about Oxford, the university and the town, and I would like to thank all of the staff at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism for their boundless reserves of patience. But, finally, I am indebted to two people most of all: I owe unfathomable thanks to Kim Wilson for her unwavering support, her faith, and her apparently-endless depths of love and forbearance. And I am grateful to Molly, for just being Molly, the sweetest and funniest little girl in the whole wide world. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 1. Lam Binh and his boat 7 2. Method 11 3. From in-need to illegal: the evolution of government 16 and media asylum narratives in Australia 3.1: Historical perspective 16 3.2: The 1970s - National ‘soul-searching’ 19 3.3: The early 90s - Illegals 27 3.4: 2001 - Asylum as terror 34 3.5: 2013 - Asylum and the language of war 42 4. Australian attitudes to asylum seekers 50 4.1: Opposition to asylum seekers 50 4.1.1: The 1970s 50 4.1.2: The early 90s 51 4.1.3: 2001 52 4.1.4: 2013 54 4.1.5: Good refugees and bad 54 5. The impact of language on public attitudes towards 56 asylum seekers 4 6. Political construction of asylum seeker narratives 61 7. International observations 67 7.1: The UK 68 7.2: Europe 72 8. A Responsibility to Question 76 9. Conclusion 80 Bibliography 82 5 “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.” George Orwell, 1945 6 1. Lam Binh and his boat Lam Binh was first. The self-taught sailor and four friends found Australia from Vietnam navigating with a single page torn from a school atlas. The page went no further south than Timor: from there he was simply following a hand-drawn arrow on the bottom of the page. But on April 26, 1976 he sighted land, and piloted his battered junk, the Kien Giang, into Darwin harbour, where he dropped anchor and waited. Lam had a speech prepared for the immigration officer who boarded the next morning: “Good morning. My name is Lam Binh and these are my friends from South Vietnam and we would like permission to stay in Australia”.1 He’d learned some English. Language is important. Words matter. The words of the government’s response were equally important. Lam and his friends were granted asylum and as other compatriot asylum seekers began arriving, fleeing the same conflict and following similarly unlikely voyages, the government publicly declared it would “offer sanctuary”2 to those seeking asylum, promising the government’s “full resources”3 would be made available to them. “As a matter of humanity, and in accord with international obligations freely entered into, Australia has accepted a responsibility to contribute towards the solution of world refugee problems,” the immigration minister said in newspaper reports.4 In the decades since Lam Binh’s arrival, the language used by Australian governments and media in discussion of people who arrive in Australia by boat has changed dramatically. Asylum seekers who arrive now in Australian waters are officially referred to in government statements as “illegals”5. Ministers have publicly alleged asylum seekers “could be murderers, could be terrorists”6 and report “whole 1 Grant, Bruce Grant The Boatpeople: An ‘Age’ Investigation (Ringwood, 1979) 7-8, 14-15 2 Australia. Commonwealth Record (Canberra, 31 August 1976) 3 Australia. Commonwealth Record (Canberra, 8 February 1977) 4 Australia. Commonwealth Record (Canberra, 24 May 1977) 5 Bianca Hall, ‘Minister wants boat people called illegals’ The Sydney Morning Herald (online), 19 October 2013 http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/minister-wants-boat-people- called-illegals-20131019-2vtl0.html 6 Darren Gray, ‘WA illegals in copycat breakouts’ The Age (Melbourne), 10 June 2000, 10: Damien Lawson, ‘Refugee! Criminal! Terrorist!’ New Internationalist (online) 1 October 2002 http://newint.org/features/2002/10/01/criminalization/ 7 villages”7 are coming to Australia in uncontrollable “floods”8. Prime Ministers have condemned asylum seekers as opportunists who “jump the queue”9, and “throw their children overboard”10. Discussion of Australia’s policies regarding asylum seekers is now framed – through the media – as a matter of “border protection” from “threats to national security”11. Policy measures such as “stopping the boats”12, it is insisted, must be conducted in secret as “if we were at war”.13 Where has this semantic change come from? What forces have driven it, and why? What impact has this changed rhetoric had on public opinion and understanding of asylum seekers, and what responsibility rests with those who report these words and these phrases about these people? Australia’s position is not unique.
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